Ros started working at Overbury after responding to an advert placed in The Times for ‘a country post’ which was quite a move from London where she had been living and working. Ros quickly took to village life whilst working in the estate office for Tim Holland-Martin.
The evolution of the office equipment over the past 48 years has been just as extreme as the machinery changes mentioned by Martyn in our previous blog. Ros’ manual typewriter gave way to an electric golf ball before being replaced with an Amstrad Word Processor. Since then there have been several other computers and now she is working in the cloud with Office 365! Telephone systems have also moved on from Martyn Bishop’s Aunt, Connie Wesson plugging cables into different holes, to electric systems going through a receptionist, to ISDN, and onto VOIP and now in the cloud as well.
Soon after Ros started, there was huge excitement at the racehorse stud when Grundy (who had been bred at Overbury) won the Derby. She can remember typing up many pedigrees, not only for the stud, but also for Overbury’s award winning Guernsey herd which she excelled at. Still today Ros keeps track of stock movements, although no one enjoys the challenges of the modern day forms! The estate book detailing each shoot has also been meticulously maintained in Ros' beautiful handwriting for many years. She has a wonderful logic for filing and everything is meticulously taken care of, be that a tiny nugget of information or a whole stewardship application. Her most favoured piece of office stationary was her treasured Rolodex, but this has sadly been replaced by her little black book instead.
Ros is also an integral part of village life. For a city girl, she quickly took to enjoying life in the countryside, from watching wildlife, (especially birds and all things insect related), to gardening and walking on the hill.
She has been the Clerk of the Parish council for 33 years and is the secretary and custodian of the village hall in which she takes great pride and to which she devotes an enormous amount of her time. Over the years she has been very busy with a very wide collection of interests, including the WI and an early village book club. She can still be seen bell ringing in the church and hopefully we will get to see her dancing skills again soon. She was again a stalwart for the village during the pandemic where her organisational charm ensured grocery deliveries into the villages for her older and less able neighbours. Ros has given so much to the community and is never one to seek or easily take praise, just simply carrying on and getting the job done.